¿Qué tal, amigos? I'm at school on break, right now, so I figured I'd update this bad boy.First, I would like to present *drumroll* the Spanish keyboard. It probably looks the same at first glance, but notice where the question mark key is, the @ symbol, the addition of an ñ, etc. Also, you have to push the space bar after an apostrophe. If you push the apostrophe key and then write a vowel directly afterwards, you'll get an accent over it. Even if you type a consonant, sometimes those will get accents, too. Which is just weird. Same thing goes for quotation marks, but they put umlauts over letters. Anyway, I just wanted everyone to feel my pain, for the moment.
In about 10ish minutes I'm going to art class to talk about the environment/maintaining cleanliness in the public space. The problem here is that a lot of the kids will just throw a half-eaten sandwich on the ground after eating it, or they throw trash out an open window like it's no big deal. So I am teaching stuff about reduce/recycle/reuse and we're going to make posters that say stuff about keeping the public space clean with cartoon drawings on them. Fun times, right?
Other stuff I've done this week is help the jefatura de estudios, or the second in command guy (like a vice principal, I think?) with his English classes. Yesterday we went over furniture vocab and talking about our families. Vocab is a bit difficult, since you just have to memorize it. Later today, I'll be practicing with the secretary guy. Part of my job description is these "conversation hours" with professors.
If nobody asks for me, then I just work on presentations or translation work for other classes. I have to translate a part of a chapter for the social studies class about layers of the earth and types of deserts, and I'm translating a short play for another class. Fun times. I also get to help cast the play, because I do small groups with the students, and I know who is the most confident and outgoing and can handle the pressure of speaking English in front of everybody. Yesterday, I had to go over the play and practice it with the professors in a meeting -- we went over 3 plays and they gave me the freakin' lead in all of them, "to practice my Spanish." Luckily for me, Spanish is an entirely phonetic language, so even if I have no idea what I'm saying, it's relatively easy just to rattle it off.
OK the bell just rang. Time for art class. Later today, I'm going to Lucena with Emiliy to get some errands and shopping done. Yay. :-D
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5 comments:
I remember this past summer in Europe, the Z and Y keys were switched. And all the punctuation was in the wrong spot. It's a minor change, but it takes some serious getting used to!
Sounds like you are a wonderful resource for this school! GREAT! And since you are the first cultural assistant that they've ever had, you set the bar for them - so set it high!
I like how they are getting you involved in some things but having you sing, act, etc., all the fun things you love to do!
Mom, I am NOT the first -- I am the third. And I'm just doing my job :-P
I had similar problems with the Belgian keyboard. Instead of QWERTY it was AZERTY plus a few other differences like the period being upper case over the semi-colon. I just google mapped Lucena and zoomed in wondering where you were. Unfortunately there were no street level pics. Adiós, hija
Mea culpa.
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